The trade union for German construction workers has called for strikes beginning on Monday, starting with workers in the north-western German state of Lower Saxony.
The trade union IG BAU announced the strike plans in Frankfurt on Friday.
Further selective strikes will take place throughout Germany from Tuesday, a trade union spokesman told dpa. About 930,000 workers in the construction industry are represented by the union.
The trade union has been demanding pay raises and other benefits in stalled collective bargaining talks with employers in the construction industry.
Lower Saxony was chosen for the first strikes because construction firms there, together with some other regions, had prevented an arbitrator's recommended settlement to the wage dispute from being implemented, according to the union.
A central strike rally will take place on Monday in the city of Osnabrück.
Construction firms rejected the arbitrator's recommendation on Friday of last week, arguing that the recommendation contained formal errors and did not take into account the difficult economic situation in the industry.
The Federation of the German Construction Industry (HBD) criticized the announced strikes on Friday.
"For our companies, every day that there is no construction means economic damage in an already uncertain situation, especially in residential construction," the group's managing director, Tim-Oliver Müller, told dpa. "Damage that is also at the expense of our employees, who are indispensable to us."
"The employers have not seized their opportunity and have not fulfilled their responsibility," countered IG BAU's national chairman, Robert Feiger.
The construction industry is one of the largest employers in Germany and, with a turnover of around €162 billion in 2023, is an important pillar of the German economy, according to ZDB figures.